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Slain Hajin militant loved theatre, worked in ‘Haider’

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 12/13/2018 11:27:58 PM

SRINAGAR, Dec 13: Saqib Bilal of Hajin, one among the three militants killed in a recent encounter at Mujgund here, was a theatre actor and had acted for a small role in Bollywood movie “Haider”.
Saqib Bilal and Mudasir Parray, a Class 9 student from Hajin Bandipora, were killed along with a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba militant in an 18-hour gun battle with security forces in Mujgund in the outskirts of Srinagar on December 9.
“Both the boys had left their homes on August 31 and Saqib’s family is at a loss to understand why he joined militancy. They looked everywhere and his mother even brought an amulet from a faith healer for her son’s safety,” a report by Hindustan Times said.
“For more than a month, we went to places to find them. Ultimately, we realised the unthinkable,” Hindustan Times quoted Asim Aijaz, Saqib’s maternal uncle, as having said.
“He had an interest in engineering. We could never understand why he joined. In fact, he left home on the day to buy some groceries. People had seen the two boys riding behind a third person on a bike,” Aijaz said.
“Saqib had cleared his Class 10 with a distinction and was studying Physics, Chemistry, and Maths in Class 11. He was a football aficionado and had even played taekwondo and kabaddi. The other boy belonged to a poor family and Saqib came from a well to do farming family,” said the report.
The report quoted Saqib’s family as having said that he had an interest in acting and had done a small role in Vishal Bhardwaj’s movie Haider.
“He was in his sixth class when he appeared for two brief shots in Haider which have appeared in the film. In one of the shots he appeared as a ‘chocolate boy’ and in another, he acted surviving a violent incident in a bus,” Aijaz said.
The uncle said the boy was a theatre artist as well.
“Before his Haider stint, he appeared in a stage show ‘Weath chi Yeahi (This is the river)’ at Tagore Hall in which he was the protagonist. He managed to get an award and even went to Odisha to repeat the performance,” Aijaz said.
The report quoted police officials as having said the two teenagers joined militancy immediately after they disappeared.